(November 24, 1999)

During the U.S. military occupation of Germany, the
Library of Congress (LOC) acquired tens of thousands of volumes from
Germany. Most of these were Nazi materials seized by the Allied occupation
authorities. Others had been looted by the Nazis from their Jewish owners
and later captured by the Allies. At a meeting of U.S. Government officials
in December 1996, an allegation was made that during the U.S. occupation,
the LOC Mission in Germany may have improperly taken some looted Jewish
books from a U.S.-controlled archive in Germany, before they could be
restituted.

In 1997, the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) of
the Department of Justice, concerned that this allegation might have merit,1 began a comprehensive study of the records of the
U.S. military government in Germany and of the LOC to determine if the
Library had improperly acquired Holocaust-era looted books. During this
investigation, no evidence was found suggesting that the LOC had acted
improperly in acquiring books or other materials in Germany. The 55-page
OSI report of this investigation (September 1999) concludes that the LOC
acted both legally and ethically in these acquisitions. The staff of the
President's Commission on Holocaust-Era Assets in the United States (PCHA)
concurs in this conclusion.2 All parties
agree, however, that the LOC collection includes books – most notably
some 5700 acquired through the agency of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction,
Inc – looted by the Nazis from Jews, which could not be restituted
because there was no evidence of rightful ownership. Discussions continue
between the PCHA and the LOC on how to acknowledge these holdings.3 The introductory and concluding sections of the
OSI report are reproduced, below.4

At a meeting of the Interagency Working Group on Nazi
Assets in December 1996, the fate of books looted by the Nazis from their
Jewish owners and captured by American armed forces late in the war was
raised. Soldiers from the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Section of the
First U.S. Army controlled these materials and routed them to a collection
center near Frankfurt, the Offenbach Archival Depot, for processing.
According to an agreement among the victorious Allied nations, these
cultural items were to be returned to the country of origin and
subsequently to their rightful owners. At the December [1996] meeting, it
was suggested that Lester Born, an archivist serving in the U.S. Army and
connected to the Offenbach Archival Depot, had in the late 1940s written a
memorandum on activities of representatives of the Library of Congress
(LOC). He had allegedly maintained that some members of the LOC Mission
examined the books held in Offenbach and removed for its collection items
before the materials could be restituted. Following the end of the Second
World War a delegation from the Library of Congress was based in Germany
where its main function was the purchase of books and periodicals.

To determine if the LOC Mission had in fact taken
manuscripts, rare and valuable books, or any other publications before the
possible restitution of them a search of the records of the Monuments, Fine
Arts and Archives Section of the U.S. military government in Germany (OMGUS)
at the National Archives and the records of the Library of Congress Mission
at the Library of Congress was undertaken.5

This investigation had the following objectives: (1)
describe the procedure by which the books looted by the Nazis from their
Jewish owners were handled by the American military government in Germany,
(2) determine the procedure adopted for the restoration of the materials to
their country of origin and ultimately to the proper owners, (3) ascertain
if the Library of Congress Mission had in fact identified and removed for
its collections books looted by the Nazis before they could be properly
restituted, (4) locate any memorandum prepared by Major Lester Born
relevant to this issue, and (5) identify other organizations that expressed
interest in the unrestituted books, particularly material whose owners
could not be identified, the so-called heirless property. As the research
progressed additional objectives were added, including: (6) describe how
the issue of the heirless books was resolved, (7) discuss the procedure for
distributing the heirless books and the organizations that participated,
and (8) identify those institutions that received these materials....

Conclusion: By 1951 the efforts to find the
owners of Jewish cultural and religious materials looted by the Nazis and
the restitution of these items had largely been completed in Europe. The
remaining books were turned over to the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction
Commission for distribution to libraries and institutions where they would
continue to benefit Jewish communities.6 Judging from the available documentation in the National Archives and in
the archives of the Library of Congress, the restitution of books to their
proper owners was handled with diligence, care, and respect, and
characterized by close attention to existing regulations.

Throughout, the Library of Congress and its Mission in
Germany was called upon to play an important role. It had long represented
American libraries in Europe and following the war gained new
responsibilities. The cables, letters and memoranda produced by the Mission
and Luther Evans, the Librarian of Congress, reveal the care with which his
organization approached the matter of looted books and Jewish cultural
items seized by the Nazis. In particular, Evans stated repeatedly that the
Library of Congress would not accept any such books. The materials received
from the Offenbach Archival Depot in the Spring of 1946, books from the
working library of the [Nazi] Institute for Research on the Jewish
Question, came only after clearance from the [office of] General Lucius
Clay, the Deputy Military Governor, and after a thorough review. The
Library of Congress Mission in Germany was more interested in obtaining
materials generated by the Nazis, materials that were not to be left in
Germany on orders of the occupation government and which otherwise [would
have been] destroyed.

During the course of research for this report, no
documentation was located in the records of the MFA&A at the National
Archives or of the Library of Congress Mission at the Library of Congress
that suggested or stated that agents or representatives of the Library of
Congress had acted inappropriately in securing books and other materials
before they could be restituted to their proper owners.

The disposition of the books that could not be
restituted, the heirless or unidentifiable materials, came after long
negotiations and serious thought by the responsible military authorities
and interested civilian institutions. The transfer of the remaining books
to the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, Inc. was a fair and thoughtful
resolution, one that ensured that the texts and cultural items stolen by
the Nazis from Jewish libraries and collections throughout occupied Europe,
centers of Judaism that had been wiped out by the Nazis, would continue to
serve their intended purpose. Of the more than 150,000 items distributed in
the United States by the JCR, the Library of Congress received 5,708. The
new centers of Jewish life and learning in the United States and Israel,
the communities they served, and a couple [of] dozen Jewish libraries were
the benefactors of this operation.

4The Handling of Looted
Books in the American Zone of Occupation, 1944-1951: A Draft Report
Prepared by the Office of Special Investigations, U.S. Department of
Justice, September 1999, p. 1-2, 53-55, reproduced with permission of the
author, Robert G. Waite.

5The records of the
Monuments, Fine Arts & Archives Section are part of Record Group 260 of
the collections of the National Archives, Washington, DC, and the materials
from the Mission are held as the "European Mission and Cooperative
Acquisitions Project," Library of Congress, Manuscript Division ,
Washington, D.C.

6On the end of these
operations, see "Subject: Liquidation of Property Division,"
Office of the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany, June 27, 1951, NA RG 260,
Box 66.